Daniel laughed in earnest this time. “Protect and serve doesn’t cover that?”
Jake chuckled. “Sure doesn’t.”
A moment passed as Jake inspected the animal, a line appearing on the smooth skin between his eyes. “You really did a number on this thing,” he said quietly.
Daniel turned back to his drawing pad, busying his pencil in shading the dark fur beneath the animal’s chin.
“It broke into the boathouse at two in the morning. Smashed through the window. Spooked me, I guess.”
Jake’s gaze flicked to the boathouse, then returned to Daniel, white teeth appearing in a lopsided grin. “Brother, you got nothing in there worth more than a Pearl Jam CD.”
Daniel nodded and rested the pad in his lap. “In broad daylight, I know that. But at two in the morning, it’s another story.”
“You get any sleep after that?”
Daniel shook his head.
No, he hadn’t slept. There was something about the idea of being an instrument of life and death that kept a man awake after killing something that didn’t deserve to die.
Jake pushed himself upright and clapped Daniel on the shoulder. “Well, come on. The fish aren’t gonna catch themselves.”
Daniel left the pad on the chair and followed Jake to the corner of the dock where the small aluminum skiff was tied. The identical Normark rods they used every Saturday were lying on the warped dock boards, and Daniel stooped to grab them, flinching at the pain in his left hand. He climbed into the skiff after Jake and propped the poles against the narrow bench seat.
He’d strained some muscle or tendon in his wrist the night before, swinging the pipe over and over like a maniac, and had worsened it digging the grave. The pain was an unnerving reminder of how out of control he’d been.
He couldn’t go off the rails like that again. If the maned wolfhadbeen a person, how on earth would he have explained a dead body in the boathouse? Jake could have walked right in through the door without knocking—as he often did—and it wasn’t as if Daniel could have invited him to sit down and calmly explain why he’d gone ballistic in the middle of the night. Jake was trusting enough, but things were different now, with the badge and all.
They’d been fishing buddies for five years, and the guy was loyal to a fault. Sure, Daniel had been less than thrilled when Jake got it into his head last summer that he wanted to be a cop and left for the Police Academy, but he came back six months later, and Daniel was relieved to find that the academy hadn’t changed him much. If it came down to it, Daniel was willing to bet that Jake would be just as likely to help him bury a body as to drag him down to the station for questioning. But he couldn’t risk it. If the law ever came between them, or if Jake ever found out the truth about Daniel’s past, there was no telling what he’d do.
Jake reached for the oars and pulled them through the wind-rippled surface of the lake as Daniel looked over his shoulder, watching the animal on the stump shrink into the distance.
“Ronnie thought he’d make a fortune, I guess,” Jake said, “charging folks to come look at maned wolves and peacocks and wild boars in chicken-wire cages, but way up here in the briars? Fat chance. Once everybody in town had a look, he’d be a thousand dollars richer and straight out of business again. The guy’s always thinking he has the next million-dollar idea. Last year it was growing rare mushrooms in his basement.”
“Gotta admire a man with vision,” Daniel joked, but Jake’s face sobered.
“Not when he’s got a wife and daughter to feed.”
Jake rowed to the middle of the lake, stopped, and rested the oars across his lap. The skiff spun in a slow circle, and for a moment neither man spoke.
It was sacred, this spot, this quiet center of the lake. From the boathouse, the summit of Mount St. Helens was hidden behind a dark ridge of pines, but out here, the mountain showed its rounded top above the hills. The peak was still covered in a blanket of winter snow in defiance of the blooming valley below, and around the lake, deep-green firs as proud and thick as a front line of soldiers stood grandly, their lower boughs rising and falling in the wind.
Daniel scanned the untamed shoreline. Out here in the middle of it all, a man could shut his mind off. There were no responsibilities. No obligation beyond the simple act of being.
Jake pulled a can of snuff from his back pocket and wedged a pinch of it into his lower lip. He offered the can to Daniel, who shook his head. Jake shrugged and tucked it back into his pocket before resting his elbows on his knees and smiling at his surroundings.
Daniel watched him as he worked the tobacco back and forth with his tongue. Innocent. An all-American boy, raised on Sunday school and Little League. In many ways, they were polar opposites. Jake wasfair where Daniel was dark. Jake was an eternal optimist and Daniel a skeptic, but somehow their friendship worked. They balanced each other out, and their Saturdays—reserved for fishing rain or shine—were the only dependable thing Daniel had to look forward to in the insulated life he’d carved out for himself.
“You’re a lucky son of a gun, you know that?” Jake’s voice interrupted Daniel’s thoughts.
“You say that every Saturday.”
“?’Cause it’s true.” Jake spit into the lake. “I’d give my left arm to have inherited a place like this.”
“It’s as much yours as it is mine.”
It was what Daniel said every Saturday in reply, to rid himself of the guilt every time Jake mentioned the “inheritance.” Jake trusted him, and anytime their conversation ventured into the past, he accepted Daniel’s glossed-over answers with the candor of someone who had been raised to believe what others told him.
Daniel reached for his pole and passed the other to Jake. They baited their hooks from the tackle box beneath the bench without conversation, and Daniel cast his line out first, wincing at the pain in his wrist.
